Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/373

 12 S. I. MAY 6, 1916.]

NOTES AND QOERIES.

367

EXECUTION OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. In the ' Calendar of State Papers and Manu- scripts relating to English Affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in other Libraries of Northern Italy,' vol. viii. p. 255, edited by H. F. Brown, London, 1894, there is the following passage, translated from the Italian, to which Mr. J. E. L. Pickering, the librarian here, has been good enough to call my attention :

Giovanni Dolfin, Venetian Ambassador in France, to the Doge and Senate.

"March 13, 1587.

" The Ambassador of England and the English Agent, the day when they went to Bellievre to give an account of the death of the Queen of Scotland, being unable to obtain an audience pf the King, presented to the Secretary a letter from the Queen addressed to His Majesty ; in this letter the Queen laments bitterly that, after having signed the warrant, and given it to Davison to keep merely because she intended in this way to satisfy the demands of her subjects, but not to make use of it, he was so rash as to have overstepped his commission. She shows her- self very sorry for the result, and would make public demonstration of that grief. The Ambas- sador declared that the Queen had caused Davison to be arrested, and had deprived him of his office ; while she herself had taken to her bed owing to the great grief she suffered through this untoward event."

The date given above is about five weeks after the execution.

What follows is interesting, but too long to opy for ' N. &. Q.' There is also an " Extract from a Letter from Mons. de L. Aubespine, Ambassador of his Most Christian Majesty to the Queen of England," which is interest- ing ; and I should like also to refer to the Preface, xvi et seq. .

M. de Bellievre was Minister of Finance in Paris, and he was sent over to England, where he arrived on Dec. 21, 1586, on a special embassy to endeavour to save the life of the Queen of Scots, who had been con- victed and sentenced to death in October, 1586; and, having failed in his mission, he left London in January, 1587.

The ' Dictionary of National Biography,' vol. xvii. p. 221, states that " Elizabeth, in a letter to James (now, by his mother's death, undisputed King of Scotland), ex- presses ' extreme dolour ' for the ' miserable accident ' that had befallen," &c. ; but no reference is made to the letter she sent to the King of France. Froude, vol. xii. p. 350, says, " To France the Queen had sent the same defence of herself which she had offered to Scotland," &c. ; but the terms of the letter to France had not been given, as far as I can ascertain, anywhere until the publication of the 'Calendar of State

Papers ' from which I have made the above extract.

Pray permit me to take this opportunity of correcting a slip I made ante, p. 210, in stating that the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, was in 1585, instead of 1586, as the date is important. HABRY B. POLAND.

Inner Temple.

SIB JOHN LADE. (See US. x. 269, 316, 357, 394.) The following paragraphs re- lating to the father and mother of this once famous person (which I take from The Public Advertiser) are not without interest :

Monday, April 23, 1759. " Sir John Lade* M.P. for Camelford, Cornwall (who lately broke his leg through his horse falling on him while hunting), died on Saturday last at Capt. Godwin's, Plumstead, Kent."

Monday, May 14, 1759. Advertisement of the sale of Sir John Lade's horses, hounds, pointers, &c.

Thursday, Aug. 2, 1759. " Yesterday Lady Lade, relict of Sir John Lade, M.P. for Camelford, was brought to bed of a son and heir at his house in Hanover Square."

HORACE BLEACKLEY.

A FORMALITY AT OXFORD AND CAM- BRIDGE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. In some of the editions of the ' Sermones tredecim' of Michael de Hungaria, as, e.g., in the one with the press -mark IA. 49290 in the British Museum, and published probably about 1490, there is a supplementary sermon at the end, evidently from the pen of an Englishman, as it contains, besides several English sentences, the following allusion to a certain formality to be observed by the " magister in theologia " when commencing to lecture " in the schools of Oxford and Cambridge " :

" Reverendissimi, Sicut noverunt homines scole que [qui] fuerunt Oxonie vel Cantabrigie, quando magister in theologia debet incipere ponit primo [pileum] in cathedra[m] et tune ponitur pillium [sic !] super caput ejus. Deinde leget unam lectionem, et post lectionem lectam disputabit unam questionem."

The preacher proceeds to explain the symbolic meaning of this formality. The cap, according to him, represents the crown of thorns, and the lectio the seven words on the Cross. L. L. K.

THE LAST OF THE DORSET FIDDLERS. The following paragraph from The Clevedon Mercury of July 5, 1913? though somewhat belated, is perhaps worthy of repetition in 'N. & Q.':

" The death has occurred at Dorchester of Mr. Harry Bailey, the last of the old Dorset fiddlers, who used to take part in the rustic junketings described by Mr. Thomas Hardy in his novels.